Monday, September 22, 2014

It was long
after midnight when I woke up and realized Charlie had not come home, again. I
didn’t want to think he was with someone else. I never did.

Over the
lavender scent of AirWick I could smell the pungent stench. That’s how I knew
he was somewhere in the house with an exorbitant amount down the drain, or
because I was attuned to the fumes by the memory of my father. The reek hit me
like a tornado and pushed me against the wall of back in time. On the contrary,
I did not take the walk down memory lane though the past is the blueprint of
the present.

In the toilet
that’s where he was, propped against the toilet seat, his legs splayed out
awkwardly. A bottle of Tusker lay on its side, dripping into a puddle that ran
to where he sat. He held a second bottle by the neck. His eyes rolled back in
their sockets, their whites an obscene gob popping out. He breathed in slow
shallow gasps, and he had vomited on himself. Add peeing to that.

For an instance
I couldn’t move a muscle, even my mouth to call him. A knot tightened around my
chest making it harder and harder for me to breathe. A cold curl of fear
unravelled at the pit of my stomach before the thought – he is dead – crossed my mind.

The he stirred.
He began to waken. Without thinking, I took the bottle from him and emptied it
in the toilet. Next thing was to help him up, but he was twice as big, and
drunk.

You’re doing what a wife should, a voice whispered. It was my mother’s. She did it religiously till
it killed her. Some other woman does it today.

I know, I
told the ghost of my mother. It runs in
the family.

But I knew it
was the last time I was doing it; if not for me, for my daughter.